My experiment in teaching students to ask questions has run headlong into yet another hurdle. Previously I had been persuaded that the students would benefit from an example, so I brought in an old book and tried to show them how I would formulate some questions as I looked at and thought about the book. […]
Previous posts have reflected on the lack of curiosity amongst students in the history of science and how we might address the issue by modeling curiosity. Subsequent conversation and comments to the first post prompted me to take my copy of Thomas Browne, Religio medici (London: J. Torbuck, 1736) into class and try to model […]
In a previous post I tried to present an assignment in my history of the scientific revolution class that will give the students a chance to work closely with a primary source. I also pointed to the difficulties I have encountered getting the students to be curious about those sources (see the reposted Can I […]
In my history of the scientific revolution course I have devised an assignment that asks the students to select, describe, and analyze a primary source from our (Haverford’s or Bryn Mawr’s) special collections. The book, pamphlet, or letter has to have been written/published during the period covered in the course—roughly 1500 to 1700—and has to […]